The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, January 11, 2019

Erasing boundaries, embracing chaos.

The Apostle James might not have thought much of Chuck Schumer
or Nancy Pelosi or Dianne Feinstein or Bill Clinton or even Barack
“He-Who-Can-Do-No-Wrong” Obama. They are just some of the political
prodigies who change their policies as often as Lady Gaga changes her clothes—about five times a day.

James has a juicy jibe for such political pendulums. He calls them
“double-minded,” warning his readers that “a double-minded man is
unstable in all his ways.” If you are going to swing from policy to
policy like Tarzan the Ape Man, at least clarify and justify your
political flip-flopping.

A little over a decade ago, the
Democrats were singing in four-part harmony to President Trump’s “we
need another brick in the wall” anthem. “We simply cannot allow people
to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and
circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently
and lawfully to become immigrants into this country,” belted out Barack Obama.

Cue prima donna Pelosi,
2008: “Do we have a commitment to secure the border? Yes.” Why?
“Because we do need to address the issue of immigration and the
challenge we have of undocumented people in our country. We certainly do
not want any more coming in.” Solo from Chuck Schumer, Georgetown,
2009: “Illegal immigration is wrong. A primary goal of comprehensive
immigration reform must be to dramatically curtail future illegal
immigration.”

In 2013, each of the 54 Democrats in the Senate voted
for $46 billion in border security, which included 700 miles in border
fencing. Blaring through their Marxist megaphones they pleaded the
plight of low-skilled American workers whose wages were hit by cheap
immigrant labor. The burden on America’s welfare state would be
intolerable, they wailed.

So what are the sirens luring the
Democrats to the perilous shores of open borders? Why now? Why so
radically? Why display this double-mindedness in such a short span of
time?

Commentators from conservative Dan Bongino to leftwing The Atlantic
posit two political explanations. First, more illegals means more votes
for the Democrats. Second, given the contagion of the Trump Derangement
Syndrome, “Democrats hate the wall because Trump loves it” as the National Review puts it bluntly.

There is an economic explanation: globalists like George Soros, Mark
Zuckerberg and Bill Gates (the latter duo helped found the
border-busting FWD.us) have made a Faustian bargain with their
Democratic hangers-on. The UN and the EU are in the vanguard of an open
borders agenda and the Democrats are keen to keep up with the globalist
Joneses (or, in this case, Merkels) and pro-migrant Pope Francis. If not for Trump, it the US would have possibly signed up to the UN global compact on migration in December 2018.

Maybe the Democrats were lying like Pinocchio on steroids when they
said a decade ago they believed in border security and immigration
control. Maybe they never really changed their position but simply used taqiyya—the Islamic doctrine of deception—to consolidate their position with gullible voters.

The Democrat ideological pedigree would surely predispose its
activists to share Marx’s vision of nation states collapsing and workers
of the world uniting in the new egalitarian heaven on earth.

Islam, in some sense, shares the Left’s doctrine of open borders.
Especially potent in the West over the last decade, Islam’s dream is a
universal Caliphate that will bulldoze national borders and unite the
Umma—the international Muslim community—under the rule of Shariah.
Moreover, Muslims are seeking to migrate to Western countries to push
their proselytizing agenda. “Muhammad mapped a migration master plan centuries before Merkel,” is how I put it.

A boundary demarcates a nation. Tear down borders and you wipe a
nation off the map—never mind casting cartographers into outer darkness!
Marriage between a man and a woman demarcates a family—the basic unit
of society. Destroy marriage and you destroy the family. If a family can
mean anything—from serial orgies to sologamy—a family will ultimately
mean nothing.

Just before the Democrats changed their position
on geographical boundaries—they did a 180 on the boundary protecting
marriage and family. The anarchist U-turn on marriage by the Democrats
defies a number of the above explanations that explain this flip-flop
with political or economic explanations.

Above all, Trump wasn’t the tectonic factor when Democrats made a seismic shift from heterosexual to gay marriage.

In September 1996, US Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA). The law defined marriage as a strictly opposite-sex institution.
Not a single Republican senator voted against the legislation; in the
House of Representatives only Republican Steven Gunderson voted against it.

Democrats strongly supported the legislation (Nancy Pelosi an
exception among leading Democrats) with House members voting in favor by
a nearly two-to-one margin (118-65) and Senate Democrats surpassing
that mark (32-14). President Bill Clinton signed DOMA into law.

By the time America’s first legal same-sex marriage took place in
2004, the Democrats had dramatically reversed their position. In the
same year, House Democrats vigorously opposed the Marriage Protection
Act by a 176-27 margin. Darel Paul in From Tolerance to Equality: How Elites brought America to Same-Sex Marriage
documents the “tremendous collapse of support within the party’s House
caucus for a traditionalist definition of marriage, from 64% in 1996 to a
mere 13% in 2004.”

He notes: “In the 1990s even the most
liberal Democrats avoided clear public endorsements of same-sex
marriage” but by “2004 all three minor Democratic candidates for
president were calling openly for national same-sex marriage.”

There is a fundamental parallel between the volte-face
on immigration and on marriage by the Democrats. Both have to do with
distinctions—and making distinctions is a biblical imperative that goes
back to the archetypal story of creation in the first chapter of the
book of Genesis.

I first spotted this when studying
intermediate Hebrew. I was memorizing Genesis 1 in Hebrew but hit the
brakes when I reached verse 4b: “And God separated the light
from the darkness.” ‘Separate’ was a funny verb! But it recurred again
and again in the chapter. Later I discovered commentator and biblical
scholar Dennis Prager’s stunning exposition
on distinctions in the Torah, explaining how separations are God’s
signature tune in creation. God himself creates separations or
distinctions or barriers or boundaries, says Prager.

The
deep-rooted problem with the Democrats is not political, economic or
even Donald Trump. It is spiritual. Radical secularization has led to a
radical removal of all boundaries—beginning with feminist bulldozing of
the boundary between man and woman and culminating paradoxically with
the gender fluidity non-existence of this boundary—much to the outrage
of some radical feminists.

Laws are predicated on boundaries.
If Democrats no longer believe in markers that distinguish right from
wrong, good from evil, lawful from lawless, order from anarchy, electing
them as lawmakers can only be self-defeating at best, suicidal at
worst.

There is, of course, one great benefit to be had from a
complete erosion of borders and boundaries—whether in the area of
immigration or in the realm of the family.

In biblical
religion, God’s boundaries in creation keeps order in place: the sea and
the land; light and darkness; day and night; human and animal; etc. The
separations serve to sustain creation and prevent it from backsliding
into primeval chaos.

In the religion of Leftism, the great
monster of chaos is a prelude to the Leviathan of the State emerging and
subduing the chaos with a view to establish its own idolatrous
hegemony.

If this is the ultimate goal of the Democratic
Party, the Chuck Schumers and Nancy Pelosis of this world might not be
so double-minded or unstable after all. On the contrary, they will be
pursuing their master plan of achieving totalitarian State control with
remarkable and ruthless single-mindedness.

Jules GomesSource: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272466/democrats-seismic-shift-immigration-jules-gomes Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Peace with the Jews is not an option.

The think tank that I run, the Center for Near East Policy
Research, has completed a four-year research activity in which all 364
schoolbooks for grades 1-12 that were published by the Palestinian
Authority (PA) in the years 2013-2018 were examined. The chief
researcher whom we hired to examine the texts used by the Palestinian
Authority and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools
was Dr. Arnon Groiss, a scholar of Middle Eastern studies. The goal of
this research project was to check the Palestinian attitude toward the
Israeli-Jewish "other" and to the possibility of solving the war with
the "other" in a peaceful manner, in the spirit of the peace agreements
known as "the Oslo Accords" that were signed by the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) and Israel in 1993-1995. The project yielded three studies
which demonstrate that Palestinian students are learning that a
peaceful resolution of the war with Israel is not an option. Instead,
the theme that runs through the PA curriculum is that "Palestine" must
be liberated from "Zionist occupation" by way of an armed struggle
titled "Revolution [Thawrah]," which involves terrorist actions styled as "self-sacrificing operations ['amaliyyat Fidaiyyah]."

You can see this in the context in a PA schoolbook reference in one of
the books to the "1972 Munich operation" in which 11 members of the
Israeli team at the Olympic Games were massacred (History Studies, Grade 11). Those who carry out such actions are called "self-sacrificing ones [Fidais]"
and those among the liberation struggle are called on to liberate the
Muslim holy place of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and removing it from
the Jews' sway.

Palestinian pupils are taught that “struggle
for liberation” is not limited to the areas of the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip, but rather the whole country from the River Jordan to the
Mediterranean Sea, as Zionist occupation is said to have started in 1948
in what is termed "the Catastrophe [Nakbah]", and not in 1967. Israel's pre-1967 territory is termed "the Palestinian territories that were occupied in 1948" (Management and Economics,
Grade 11). Pre-1967 Israel is never presented as a legitimate sovereign
state nor does it appear on the map where it is replaced in its
entirety by "Palestine."

Israel's very name is replaced in PA
texts as "the Zionist Occupation" or "the Zionist Entity," which should
be extirpated from the Middle East (History Studies, Grade 12).
Cities inside pre-1967 Israel, such as Nazareth, Jaffa, Haifa, Acre,
Tiberias, Beer Sheba and Ashkelon, are transformed by PA schoolbooks
into Palestinian cities. Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war and
their five-million-or-so descendants are mandated by PA education to
return to liberated Palestine and thus the 70-year old "Catastrophe"
would end.

PA schoolbooks present all of the six million Jewish citizens as colonizing settlers motivated by racist sentiments (History Studies,
Grade 12), who occupied Palestine, massacred and expelled many of its
original inhabitants, and have held the rest “under occupation” to this
very day. The illegitimate status of the Jews in the country in the eyes
of Palestinian educators is well expressed by the noted absence from
the map of cities established by Jews in modern times, or showing them
under Arabic names. Tel Aviv's name is presented as "Tal al-Rabi.“ Eilat
appears as "Umm al-Rashrash."

Not only is the current Jewish
presence in Palestine delegitimized, but PA education denies past Jewish
history in the country, as well as their holy places that are presented
as exclusively Islamic ones, including the Western Wall in Jerusalem
and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. The Jews' notions of
historical ties to Jerusalem in particular, are described in PA texts as
"baseless claims," "superstitions," "legends," "illusions," and
"distorted narratives" (Arabic Language 1: Reading, Grammar, Prosody and Expression - Academic Path, Grade 12) and the Jews themselves are presented as "usurpers" and "invaders."

As if this heavy de-legitimization of both Israel's existence and
the Jews' very presence in the country is not enough, the PA schoolbooks
also contain numerous pieces demonizing all Jews within two Islamic
contexts: as a people disobedient to, even blasphemous of, God,
according to Koranic verses, and as a group hostile to Muhammad, the
prophet of Islam, and the early Muslims in Arabia. The impact of these
accusations on the minds of young Palestinians who are relatively
religiously-oriented portrays all Jews in Israel in a negative light,
even more than their demonization in the context of the ongoing
Arab-Israeli war which was launched by the Arab League in 1948. Israel,
referred to in the PA texts by the epithet "the Zionist Entity," is
demonized in the context of the "primary sin" of its very establishment.

The effort of the PA schoolbooks is augmented by the absence of any
objective information about Israel and the Jews that would
counterbalance it. Nor do the PA schoolbooks refer to the Jewish-Israeli
individual as an ordinary human being. Jews are referred to as a hated
ethnic group, with all the accompanying connotations of alienation and
threat, which makes them a legitimate target for violence. Indeed, using
violence against Israel and the Jews is considered by the PA
schoolbooks as legitimate (in defense of Islam and its holy places in
the country), moral (in light of their perceived inherent evil), and
legal (because they are presented as foreign occupiers who act in
contradiction to international law, and said to constitute an
existential threat to the Palestinian people).

Peace and
co-existence cannot be an option, given the indoctrination of PA
schoolbooks. Thus, these new schoolbooks contribute to the perpetuation
of war. Indeed, one of the findings of the present study is that such
indoctrination has spread to all school subjects, especially
mathematics, and it appears as well in purely professional textbooks
such as "Small Businesses" and "Management and Economics" of the
Entrepreneurship and Business stream and "Entrepreneurship in Business"
of the Technological stream.

We have presented our findings
before the U.S. Congress, the Canadian Parliament, the Swedish
Parliament, the British Parliament and, most recently, at the United
Nations. People who support peace in the Middle East should raise their
voices and demand that the Palestinian Authority change its war-oriented
curriculum as a precondition to any move towards peace, in accordance
with its commitments by virtue of the Oslo Peace Accords which form the
basis of the very establishment and operation of the nascent PA. A peace
accord without peace education seems futile.

David Bedein is a Journalist, founder of the Israel Resource News Agency and
Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research. His website, www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com, has produced more than 3000 news stories, 18 short films and two books: Genesis of the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA: Road Block to Peace.Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272465/how-palestinian-schoolbooks-indoctrinate-students-david-bedein Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

The Dutch and Norwegian governments have accused Iran of plotting to assassinate dissidents.

The Iranian nuclear deal was supposed to have encouraged Tehran to act like a normal, civilized country. The Europeans are so enamored of the deal that they still believe in that fiction and want to preserve the agreement at all costs.

In truth, the tiger has not changed its stripes. The New York Post is reporting that the Dutch government believes Iranian intelligence was behind the assassinations of two Iranian dissidents, while the Norwegian government said in October of 2017 that it had thwarted another assassination plot against a prominent critic of Tehran.

This week, the Dutch government confirmed that Iran’s intelligence ministry was behind two assassinations in the Netherlands — of Ahmad Mola Nissi in The Hague in November 2017 and Ali Motamed in Amsterdam two years earlier.In this case, the mullahs allegedly hired Dutch gangland types to carry out the murders. As the US government has repeatedly emphasized, Hezbollah, Iran’s Shiite terror proxy in Lebanon, has close connections with organized crime worldwide.The Dutch bombshell followed October’s announcement by the Danish government that it had thwarted an Iranian plan to assassinate a leader of the separatist Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz. Swedish ­authorities arrested a Norwegian citizen of Iranian extraction for his alleged role in the plot; he has been extradited to Denmark.Tehran was also behind a foiled bombing in France last summer. That attack was supposed to target a gathering of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, the Marxist-Islamist cult that helped bring the mullahs to power in 1979 but has since turned against them.Had the Paris plot succeeded, it could have shattered hundreds of innocent lives in the French capital’s urban core. Among the attendees at the MEK gathering: former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.The French government concluded “without any doubt” that Iran’s intelligence ministry was behind the attempted attack, which had been operationally led by a Vienna-based Iranian spook posing as an intelligence official, on orders from Saeid Hashemi Moghadam, the Islamic Republic’s director-general of intelligence, who answers directly to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.Both France and Germany have recently carried out major raids against Iranian spy-terror networks. The Germans found that Iran was gathering information so it could draw up a list of targets for assassination, should the regime choose to carry them out. The list included many Jews and other supporters of Israel, including a former member of the Bundestag, Reinhold Robbe, head of the German-Israel Society.

Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, the US state department has identified Iran as the world's number one terror state. And for good reason:

Other notable entries in Iran’s black book of terror include the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, the deadliest single attack on US Marines since World War II; the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people, and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 20, most of them Americans.The targeting of dissidents abroad is also par for the course for the regime. Such operations began with Shahriar Shafiq, the Shah’s nephew and a high-ranking officer in the former regime’s navy, struck down by Iranian agents in Paris in December 1979.Foreign assassinations continued unabated throughout much of the 1980s and ’90s. Operations targeting domestic dissidents inside the country were carried out in tandem but with even greater efficiency — and impunity.

This is the nation an American president felt worthy enough to treat with.

The murder arm of the Iranian government is the Quds Force - a select organization of operatives who work exclusively overseas. They answer directly to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Lest anyone believe that the terror attacks by Iran are executed by rogue elements in their intelligence services, it would be wise to examine the relationship of the Revolutionary Guards to the Supreme Leader. The Rev Guards are the sharp end of the stick of both foreign and domestic policy in Iran. They don't move without his say so.

Despite all this evidence, the EU continues to look for ways to revive the nuclear deal and circumvent sanctions. They believe the alternative - war - is too horrible to contemplate. But there are several ways to destabilize an already unstable regime that don't involve armed conflict. Under Trump, those options are being pursued.

The Europeans should get their heads out of the sand and support us.

Rick MoranSource: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/01/once_again_iran_accused_of_carrying_out_terror_attacks_in_europe.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Today,
the Muslim Brotherhood has the most extensive network of completely
legal organizations in the Old World, while they retain the closest of
ties with the Salafis and jihadists, which makes them even more
dangerous than the militant radicals.

European media activists have found more than 180 Islamic
organizations in Europe that, under the category of non-governmental
human rights associations, are promoting the idea of creating a global
caliphate and fighting against opponents of the Islamization of Europe.
And they do it with the money of European taxpayers and the countries of
the Middle East. Since 2010, when the main funding began, these
organizations have received more than $300 million. Most of the
organizations are associated with the Muslim Brotherhood international
movement, which is banned in many countries. This movement has the same
goal with other organizations banned in most of countries of the world,
including Al-Qaida and the Islamic State: the creation of a worldwide
caliphate. But it is only now that other, non-violent methods are
bringing these Muslims closer to their goal of conquering Europe. Today,
the Muslim Brotherhood has the most extensive network of completely
legal organizations in the Old World, while they retain the closest of
ties with the Salafis and jihadists, which makes them even more
dangerous than the militant radicals.

Their goal is to create a global caliphate

They organize European Muslims, they speak for them, they represent
them, and today they are their loudest voice, whether European Muslims
like it or not. The largest number of these Islamic movements is found
in the UK, followed by Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and
France. These Islamic organizations were created and controlled by the
Muslim Brotherhood and have Egyptian roots, as well as ties to the
Palestinian jihad movement Hamas, and the State Religious Administration
of Turkey, known as Diyanet.

Most politicians are fooled by the Muslim Brotherhood, and at the
same time, they use them to advance for their own agenda. The Islamists
do not declare their real goals to the European public. Therefore, we
are trying to show their tactics and ties to the jihadists and Sharia
supremacists. According to the Brotherhood operatives, they are fighting
against “Islamophobia”; this fight is the main objective of these
organizations. For that, they receive official funding, mainly since
2010. The European Commission and the governments of Sweden, Germany,
Austria, Switzerland, Great Britain and Norway allocated $155 million to
the Islamist activities of Islamic organizations. Another $157 million
went to their accounts from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the USA — from
governments, charitable foundations, private individuals and royal
families. For example, in 2014, the Danish Islamic Organization received
20 million euros from the government of Qatar, and from the League of
Muslims in Belgium, nearly 1.1 million.

In fact, in the fight against “Islamophobia,” Islamists promote the
claim that Islam is peaceful, and they carry on campaigns against those
who oppose the Islamization of the European society. They put pressure
on those who decide to tell the truth. A tough fight is being promoted
even in social networks. For example, Facebook has a group, Report
Anti-Islamic Pages, with more than 11 thousand participants. Led by
people from Pakistan, they collect data about all users and groups
which, in their opinion, advocate anti-Islamic policies. For example,
they bombarded the administration of the social networks and Facebook
with letters called for the blocking of the “Republic of Atheists”
group, which had 1.6 million participants.

At the same time, most European politicians only see the fight
against “Islamophobia” as Islamic organizations simply promoting the
rights of Muslims. That was the statement of the President of Austria,
Alexander Van der Bellen. In April, he said at one of the TV channels
that all European women should wear headscarves as a sign of solidarity
with Muslim women.

According to activists, one of the active sponsors of efforts to
combat “Islamophobia” is the billionaire George Soros. Over the past six
years, his organization, the Open Society Foundation, has allocated $
1.5 million in support of the Islamist organizations.

Billionaires such as George Soros donate cash to support groups which
later will create chaos in Europe. Activists say that several cases of
sponsoring organizations of the Muslim Brotherhood could be attributed
to be a mistake, but this is a matter of numerous grants. Their main
recipient is the European Network Against Racism (ENAR). Its entire
leadership is made up of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including
director Michel Privot. Prior to that, he was vice president of the
Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organization, which protects
the rights of Muslim youth and is part of the global network of the
Muslim Brotherhood.

Another organization funded by the George Soros Foundation is the
association for the promotion of Islam in Germany. According to the Wall
Street Journal, it has connections with the Muslim Brotherhood. 60% of
the organization is funded by the countries of the Arab Gulf states, and
it is located in the German capital in the same building with two
Islamist organizations, under the supervision of the Federal Office for
the Protection of the Constitution in Bavaria, with links with the
Muslim Brotherhood. The building itself belongs to the European party
functionary El Zayat.

The scope of investment in European Islam is impressive. In early May
2017, the largest mosque in Scandinavia, able to hold 2,000 believers,
opened in Malmö, Sweden. The construction cost more than 3 million
euros, paid by Qatar. In Finland, the royal family of Bahrain is ready
to give $151 million for the construction of the grand mosque, but the
project has caused fierce debate in Helsinki, and its approval has been
postponed. In the capital of Finland, there are already several mosques,
and the new one will be twice as large as the main Lutheran cathedral.

They are building a parallel society

In Sweden, there was no debate about the construction of a mosque,
although this year the country’s Emergency Situations Agency published a
report which bluntly states that the Muslim Brotherhood is building a
parallel society in the country with its values, ​​and in the future it
will threaten the country’s cohesion.

Brotherhood members tell their brethren in other countries: try to
have your own small society inside a big one, otherwise you will melt in
it like salt in water. What has preserved Jewish identity in recent
centuries is their small communities, which were unique in their ideas
and rituals and were called Jewish ghettoes. Try to have your own Muslim
ghetto, in the words of the unofficial ideologue of the Muslim
Brotherhood, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi.

The study of the state institution directly states: in Sweden an
ideological network of associations and organizations has been created,
and European democracy can be an excellent tool for achieving the
caliphate. On the one hand, Islamists are difficult to blame, because in
defense of their activities they talk about equality and the promotion
of religious rights and freedom of opinion. On the other hand, they
actively promote their interests through business and politics. This
work can influence Swedish society, even through various EU directives
and its policies in individual areas,.

Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror

Political Islam as a concept divides our societies and leads to
radicalization. And the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists act as
its drivers. Due to the closed nature of Muslim communities, which are
growing by leaps and bounds due to the influx of refugees, most ordinary
Europeans are not aware of what is happening inside them. Muslims are
trying to use sharia laws among European Muslims, and they try to force
their women to wear hijabs.

At the same time, most of the inhabitants of the Old World do not
notice how Islam slowly but surely enters their lives. Even through the
food. For example, halal food cooked according to Sharia rules has
become familiar in the West. According to Reuters, in 2015, spending on
halal food was around to $1.1 trillion, and brought in revenues of
nearly $414 billion. In Europe, due to the ritual killing of animals
with throat-cutting, halal food was banned in Denmark, Switzerland, and
recently in Belgium. In the rest of Europe, it is freely sold and
generates income. According to the journalist Alexander Del Valle, in
France 60% of halal food is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, since
the Islamist organizations of this party certify the products, and
without it they cannot be considered halal. In France, the Union of
Islamic Organizations of France includes about 200 associations. In
other countries, activists call the Islamic Center in Munich, the
Islamic Center in Aachen, and the Finnish Islamic Association, which is
recognized as a terrorist group by the UAE for financing and training
jihadis.

Europeans also face the ugly side of Islamization. However, this
doesn’t happen often, so far; it is usually only when it affects their
personal interests, or scandalous details of the inner life of Muslim
communities are revealed. For example, in 2014, Islamists in several
schools tried to start training jihadis in Birmingham, and in May 2017 a
scandal shook Denmark: a video of Imam Mundhir Abdullah’s sermon in the
Copenhagen mosque appeared on the Internet. Against the background of
the black flag featuring the shahada (the inscription “There is no god
other than Allah and Muhammad is his prophet”), he quoted in Arabic the
Hadith that Judgment Day would not come until Muslims defeated the Jews
and killed them. The imam also said that a caliphate would soon appear,
which would start a war to unite Muslim society and lead to the
liberation from the Zionists of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

However, the terrorist attacks in Europe and the entry of hundreds of
Europeans into the ranks of the Islamic State have already shown what
benefits Islamization can bring to Europe. In Denmark, a 17-year-old
girl is accused of planning to blow up two schools, including a Jewish
school in Copenhagen.

The Muslim Brotherhood and other such groups do not openly display
their ties with recognized jihadis, convincing everyone around them in
their peace-loving nature. However, they are directly related to Salafis
and jihadists. For example, the organization Global Campaign against
Aggression (GAAC), which appeared immediately after the start of the
second US war in Iraq in 2003. Representing itself as a
non-governmental, independent, peaceful and educational campaign, GAAC
is an umbrella organization with Salafis (Wahhabis), jihadists, the
Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas gathered under its roof, some of whom are
recognized by the US and Europe as terrorists — so says the report of
the Muslim Brotherhood Center for Study in 2017. Thus, the secretary
general of the organization, Safar Al-Hawali, is considered one of Osama
bin Laden’s teachers. He endorsed the September 11 attacks in the
United States and called for jihad against the Americans and their
allies. And the president of GAAC, Abdul Rahman bin Oumar al-Nuai, was
recognized by Washington as one of the sponsors of Al-Qaida. The
organization itself, according to the author Steven Merley, is an
attempt to unite the Islamic jihad forces under one roof in order to
oppose the Americans and their allies. At the same time, as the report
says, the Muslim Brotherhood itself does not hide its desire to conquer
Europe.

Al-Qaradawi himself said that Islam would return to Europe as a
conqueror and winner after it had been expelled twice. He explained it
in detail in the following way: It seems that the next conquest, as
Allah desires, will occur through preaching and ideology; the words of
the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood are quoted in the report.

To confirm these words, a video appeared on Facebook. It showed a
scene in a German city as one of the Islamic preachers climbed the
monument’s pedestal and loudly told others that after several
generations, Germany would become an Islamic country and Germany’s
daughters would marry Muslims.

For those who don’t know, the spiritual mentor of Osama bin Laden was
a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Abdullah Azzam. He is the Number
One Terrorist whom Osama met at a university in Saudi Arabia. “People at
the university changed him. He became a different person, Aliya Ganem,
Osama bin Laden’s mother, told The Guardian in August 2017. – He was a
very good child, until he met some people who largely brainwashed him
when he was a little over 20 years old.”

Rami DabassSource: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/01/the-muslim-brotherhood-plan-in-europe-for-a-global-caliphate Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

"Today, we essentially have a totalitarian force in the world,
and that is these large tech companies".

As if this were not "creepy"
enough, there is another process going on that is far less transparent:
"listing" -- the order in which information appears on Google. The "list
effect" on our cognitive functioning, Epstein explains, is that we
believe that the items appearing at the top of a set of search results
-- whether the category is dog food or political candidates -- are the
most relevant, valuable or true. Google and Facebook are able, thus, to
prioritize the information we receive, while pretending to be neutral
platforms, rather than content producers exercising editorial control.
It is this pretense that exempts them from being subject to the laws
governing publishers.

"If they have this kind of power, then democracy is an
illusion... There have to be in place numerous safeguards to make sure
not only that they don't exercise these powers, but that they can't
exercise these powers. The Internet belongs to all of us. It does not
belong to Google or Facebook." — Dr. Robert Epstein, American psychology
professor; "The Creepy Line".

"Today, we essentially have a totalitarian force in the world,
and that is these large tech companies. But guess what? They didn't use
storm troopers.... We all opted in... We volunteered for this
arrangement. And we live in a world today in which these tech giants
have a level of control and an ability to manipulate us that Stalin,
Mao, Hitler and Mussolini could only have dreamed of." — Peter
Schweitzer, producer of "The Creepy Line".

"The
Creepy Line," a new documentary, reveals the way in which Google and
Facebook manipulate consumers through the collection of users' data, and
sheds light on current controversies surrounding privacy and political
bias. (Image source: thecreepyline.com/video screenshot)

A new documentary,
revealing the way in which the major technology companies Google and
Facebook manipulate consumers through the collection of users' data,
sheds light on current controversies surrounding privacy and political
bias. Called "The Creepy Line," the film argues that even the most
intelligent people among us are serving as unwitting pawns in a power
grab, enabled by mathematical algorithms, without our being aware of it.

The title of the 80-minute movie is taken from a phrase used by the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, who in a 2010 interview said:

"There's what I call the 'creepy line,' and the Google
policy about a lot of these things is to get right up to the 'creepy
line' but not cross it."

Produced by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer and directed by M.A. Taylor,
the film both claims and illustrates that Google and Facebook not only
crossed that line long ago, but continue to push it further away.
Schweizer, author of the New York Times best-seller Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, is among the prominent interviewees in the film. Others include Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson and American psychology professor and researcher Dr. Robert Epstein.

Peterson is best known for his widely popular YouTube videos criticizing political correctness and taking issue with the Trudeau government's passage of a bill
rendering gender identity as a prohibited ground of discrimination. His
conservative message gained him both fame and notoriety.

Epstein, formerly the editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, is the co-author of a 2015 study
titled: "The search engine manipulation effect (SEME) and its possible
impact on the outcomes of elections." Although self-described in the
film as apolitical, Epstein said that he viewed Hillary Clinton as a
more suitable candidate for president than Donald Trump in the 2016
election. Peterson and Epstein, in spite of their political differences,
are in total agreement about what they consider to be a dangerous abuse
of power on the part of the two tech giants, which, for all intents and
purposes, possess a monopoly on the digital information highway.

"Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets
and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is
not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight.
Each grows out of the other, and we need them all."

It continues with a segment from NBC's "The Today Show" in 1994,
in which the hosts are asking, "What is the Internet anyway?" It is
both an amusing and a startling reminder of how far the World Wide Web
and universal home-computer usage have progressed in less than three
decades.

This progress has a "dark side," however, according to the film,
which takes viewers through a step-by-step description of the advent of
search engines and the spread of social media -- free services that,
unbeknownst to most of us, are actually costing us dearly. In fact,
asserts the film -- which shows a clip of Facebook founder and CEO Mark
Zuckerberg testifying before the US Senate and explaining that he makes
money by "running ads" -- it is we who have become the product. It is
the collection of our personal data and the dissemination of it to
companies vying for our business that make us literal targets for
advertisers.

As if this were not "creepy" enough, there is another process going
on that is far less transparent: "listing" -- the order in which
information appears on Google. The "list effect" on our cognitive
functioning, Epstein explains, is that we believe that the items
appearing at the top of a set of search results -- whether the category
is dog food or political candidates -- are the most relevant, valuable
or true. Google and Facebook are able, thus, to prioritize the
information we receive, while pretending to be neutral platforms, rather
than content producers exercising editorial control. It is this
pretense that exempts them from being subject to the laws governing publishers.

"If they have this kind of power, then democracy is an illusion," Epstein says.

"There have to be in place numerous safeguards to make sure not only that they don't exercise these powers, but that they can't exercise these powers. The Internet belongs to all of us. It does not belong to Google or Facebook."

He then warns: "The more rope we give them, the sooner we are all hanged."

Peterson suggests a different solution, that of "multiple competing
search engines and... multiple Facebooks, because at least then we'd
have a diversity of ethical conundrums, instead of this totalitarian
conundrum that we have right now."

Schweizer says that if Google and Facebook continue to edit, filter
and steer content for political purposes, they are going to have to be
"regulated every bit as much as any media company." This makes sense, he
explains, because "it essentially allows the tech companies to decide,
now that they've grown up, what they actually want to be. And it's a
choice that they should... be forced to make... and not hide behind this
fraud of legislation that gives them a free hand when they don't
deserve [one].

His summary of the situation, however, is far more ominous:

"The traditional notion of totalitarianism was resting on
the premise or the idea that a government would try to achieve total
control over your life [through] the might and muscle of government, and
to do so under compulsion. Today, we essentially have a totalitarian
force in the world, and that is these large tech companies. But guess
what? They didn't use storm troopers. They didn't use the gulag. They
didn't use the arrest of political prisoners... We all opted in... We
volunteered for this arrangement. And we live in a world today in which
these tech giants have a level of control and an ability to manipulate
us that Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Mussolini could only have dreamed of."

"The Creepy Line" premiered on September 17 in New York and September 19 in Washington. On September 21, the Capitol Forum news and analysis site reported
that the White House had prepared a two-part draft of an executive
order "to better police dominant online platforms" and "to enforce
against anticompetitive conduct when they have authority, and, if they
don't, to report concerns or issues to the Federal Trade Commission or
the Department of Justice."

Ruthie Blumis the author of "To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the 'Arab Spring.'"Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13491/the-creepy-line Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Council on American-Islamic Relations files federal lawsuit claiming Maryland's ban on contracting with businesses that support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel violates rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Maryland's ban on
contracting with businesses that boycott Israel tramples on the First
Amendment rights of a software engineer who advocates for Palestinians, a
Muslim civil rights group claims in a lawsuit filed Wednesday.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations'
federal lawsuit seeks to block the state from enforcing an executive
order that Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan signed in October 2017.

The order requires contractors to certify in writing that they don't boycott Israel.
The group's suit claims the order has an unconstitutional chilling
effect on First Amendment-protected political advocacy supporting
Palestine.

CAIR says 25 other states have enacted
measures similar to Maryland's, through legislation or executive orders.
CAIR attorney Gadeir Abbas said other federal lawsuits have challenged
measures in Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas and Texas.

CAIR sued Hogan and state Attorney General
Brian Frosh on behalf of software engineer Syed Saqib Ali, a former
state legislator. Ali's lawsuit says the order bars him from bidding for
government software program contracts because he supports boycotts of
businesses and organizations that "contribute to the oppression of
Palestinians."

"Speech and advocacy related to the
Israel-Palestine conflict is core political speech on a matter of public
concern entitled to the highest levels of constitutional protection,"
the suit says.

Raquel Coombs, a spokeswoman for the
attorney general's office, said the attorney general hadn't seen the
suit and doesn't comment on pending litigation. A spokeswoman for
Hogan's office said, "We are confident that our executive order is
completely consistent with the First Amendment and will be upheld in
court."

Ali, a resident of Gaithersburg, served as a
member of the Maryland House of Delegates from 2007 to 2011 and
represented Montgomery County as a Democrat. He accused Hogan, a
Republican, of making an "end around" the Legislature by signing the
executive order after lawmakers repeatedly rejected several "anti-BDS"
bills targeting the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
movement.

"This is unacceptable, and Larry Hogan
should know that our rights will not be stricken by him," Ali said at a
news conference in Baltimore.

The executive order says a boycott based on
religion, national origin or ethnicity is discriminatory. A business
boycott of Israel and its territories "is not a commercial decision made
for business or economic reasons," it says.

"Contracting with business entities that
discriminate make the State a passive participant in private-sector
commercial discrimination," the order says.

In December, the Arkansas Times weekly
newspaper sued to block a similar measure. That state law, which took
effect in August 2017, requires contractors to reduce their fees by 20%
if they don't sign a pledge not to boycott Israel.

Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge's
office argued that boycotting Israel is not activity protected by the
First Amendment.

"It is neither speech, nor is it conduct
that is inherently expressive, nor associational activity that is
afforded constitutional protection," wrote attorneys representing
Rutledge's office.

AP and Israel Hayom StaffSource: http://www.israelhayom.com/2019/01/10/muslim-group-sues-to-block-no-boycott-of-israel-measure/ Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Virtue-signaling feels great, like a sugar high, but the aftermath often brings predictable consequences that somehow escaped the notice of the person anxious to demonstrate righteousness.

Mitt Romney knows that he is a smart guy and is used to thinking of himself as the smartest guy in the room. But I don’t think that he thought through the now-infamous Washington Post op-ed attacking President Trump’s character that he published on New Year’s Day, just a few days prior to assuming his new job as US Senator from Utah. Virtue-signaling feels great, like a sugar high, but the aftermath often brings predictable consequences that somehow escaped the notice of the person anxious to demonstrate righteousness.

Mitt failed to understand that he is joining what is often called “the world’s most exclusive club.” The Senate, with only 100 members and immense powers, is not at all like the raucous House of Representatives. And though Senators face re-election only after 6 long years, they are very, very concerned with their ability to keep their membership card.

Politico reporters Burgess Everett and James Arkin took the temperature among Mitt’s Republican colleagues in the Senate and found evidence of a chillier reception than he probably expected:

When Romney heads into his first Republican Conference meeting later this week, he might face an awkward reception from many of his fellow Republican senators. Some are scratching their heads about why Romney ripped Trump in a Washington Post op-ed; others are angry about reopening an intraparty divide. And it could color how Senate Republicans view Romney over the long term, raising questions about his effectiveness in the GOP conference.“Focusing on our political opponents that are trying to annihilate us and embarrass the president is probably a more productive focus, rather than just criticize what the president is, how he does things,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the former whip who is running for reelection as a Trump ally.

Sen. Cornyn is not the only GOP senator whose electoral fate is linked to Trump’s popularity:

…everything Romney says that’s critical of Trump could affect his 52 GOP colleagues, a number of whom are running for reelection alongside Trump in 2020.

Not just the Republican senators facing the electorate in 2020 are at risk, so is the entire Senate caucus. If voters hand the majority to Democrats in 2020, life is going to be a lot less pleasant for the remaining Republicans. No more committee chairmanships, no more ability to determine the fate of presidential appointments. How would you like to be under the thumb of Chuck Schumer?

Self-interest in getting re-elected and maintaining majority status is the dominant consideration, but there are other factors at work, too. The Senate likes to settle differences behind closed doors. Its organizational culture stresses collegiality, offering public respect (“my distinguished colleague across the aisle”) to one’s opponents. In addition to the personal gratification from being treated this way, the culture also reinforces the superiority of the Senate over the House, a vital concern for all senators.

Mitt has now threatened this. He may have to eat some humble pie, which is a huge challenge for someone who has been a corporate CEO and then a governor, an Olympics Committee CEO, and a presidential candidate. He will be a junior senator, which means a lot in the Senate. The key word is "deference," a quality not common among CEOs and presidential candidates.

For reasons that escape me, he was awarded a plum spot on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But in the clubby atmosphere of the Senate, there will be many other opportunities to extract a price from him for offending and even endangering the careers of his political faction in that body.

Thomas LifsonSource: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/01/mitt_romney_is_discovering_that_his_wapo_oped_attack_on_trump_wasnt_such_a_good_idea_after_all.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Sajid Javid is a rising star in the British Conservative party. If he can stop the boats across the Channel, he will be perfectly positioned to take control of the British Conservative Party as well as the rising migrant crisis.

"A question has to be asked: if you are a genuine asylum seeker, why have you not sought asylum in the first safe country that you arrived in? Because France is not a country where anyone would argue it is not safe in any way whatsoever, and if you are genuine then why not seek asylum in your first safe country?" — British Home Secretary Sajid Javid.

Asylum seekers in Britain are entitled to free accommodation, cash support at £37.75 per person per week, free healthcare, free dental care, free eyesight tests, free glasses, maternity grants and free schooling -- much to the chagrin of many British nationals and former service personnel who do not have access to many of these benefits.

Another tragedy of Alan Kurdi proportions is only a matter of time. The media are poised and salivating at the prospect of capturing this impending disaster for their front pages; the hackles of a hundred migrant and refugee charities are raised in anticipation of the PR opportunities ahead of them.

Sajid Javid is a rising star in the British Conservative party. If he can stop the boats across the Channel, he will be perfectly positioned to take control of the British Conservative Party as well as the rising migrant crisis.

The British Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, has called in the Royal Navy to help deal with the migrant crisis in the Channel. Pictured: HMS Mersey patrols the Strait of Dover on January 9, 2019, in a bid to prevent further illegal migrant crossing attempts. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Since November, 239 migrants successfully made the crossing from Calais, France to Dover, England in small inflatable boats. A total of 539 migrants tried to make the crossing in 2018.

According to the Daily Mail, "Most of those held by police crossing the world's busiest shipping lane from France since November have claimed to be Iranian." Whether this is factually correct, or a line given to them by the people smugglers they pay for their journey, is a reasonable question.

According to UK immigration lawyer Colin Yeo, "The latest asylum statistics show that around three-quarters of Iranian asylum claims succeed," -- a fact the people-smugglers presumably know well and capitalise on for profit.

The legitimacy of these migrant stories is a concern to the Home Secretary, who has been speculating as to what extent these migrants in the Channel are 'genuine' asylum seekers. During a visit to Dover he said:

"A question has to be asked: if you are a genuine asylum seeker, why have you not sought asylum in the first safe country that you arrived in?... Because France is not a country where anyone would argue it is not safe in any way whatsoever, and if you are genuine then why not seek asylum in your first safe country?"

Predictably, Javid has been vilified by the 'Left' for daring to ask an obvious question that requires an answer; was accused of "normalising anti-refugee rhetoric" by Labour MP Stella Creasy, and was used for political point-scoring by the Liberal Democrats, whose Home Affairs spokesman, Ed Davey, said that Javid's remarks "show that the Tories' nasty, hostile environment is alive and well".

This political game of ping-pong is predictable and well worn, practised on both side of the Atlantic: Sajid and Trump taking a principled stand and defending borders, to the relief of taxpayers and the silenced majority; the liberal elite in their splendid isolation, protected by their wealth, arguing on behalf of the illegals.

A look at the numbers might suggest this is a migrant storm in a teacup, and that recalling two UK Border Patrol vehicles and calling in the Navy to the Channel is a right-wing overreaction to a relatively small problem.

Crossings cannot be tallied definitively, but the Home Office knows of 539 migrants who tried to cross the English Channel by boat in 2018, which is probably far fewer than the number who came by lorry. Only 312 completed the journey (the rest were caught).

The numbers belie a known truth: there are tens of thousands of migrants trying to break into Britain, biding their time on the coast of France until they can fund or find a way across. 113,145 illegal immigrants made it across the Mediterranean last year.

Sources on the ground attest to a growing number of Iranians in Calais. According to the Economist:

"Several hundred Iranians made it to Calais via Serbia between August 2017 and October 2018, after Belgrade temporarily dropped a visa requirement. Most speak English and are keen to work."

An Iranian asylum seeker who made the treacherous journey across the English Channel in a small boat just over a fortnight ago told UK Channel 4 that "the combination of the harsh conditions in France and the poor exchange rate are behind the spike in asylum seekers risking the crossing."

England is seen as the land of milk and honey for many: its asylum claim process allows migrants to stay freely in the UK whilst their asylum claim is considered. Asylum seekers are entitled to free accommodation, cash support at £37.75 per person per week, free healthcare, free dental care, free eyesight tests, free glasses, maternity grants and free schooling -- much to the chagrin of many British nationals and former service personnel who do not have access to many of these benefits.

Asylum-seekers (real or fraudulent) know their rights.

"The outcome of an asylum application cannot be pre-judged before it has been made and must be processed on its individual merit, irrespective of how that person reached the country," Dr Lisa Doyle, Director of Advocacy at the Refugee Council, reminds us.

Colin Yeo, a leading immigration and asylum barrister at Garden Court chambers, told The Guardian that Javid's apparent threat to reject applications was illegal: "I imagine the Home Secretary knows this, but if so it is depressing that he is still saying it as a way of trying to make himself sound tough."

The contrast between legal and humanitarian arguments and the reality on the ground, cheek to cheek with the migrants themselves, is stark. I have spent time in the migrant camps of Calais, formerly known as 'The Jungle', and have seen at first hand the lengths to which migrants will go to make the crossing. They will cut through chain fencing, throw railway sleepers under the wheels of lorries to try and get on board, and physically battle the French police and their tear gas. Our photographer, almost lynched by the mob for his camera gear, had to be 'repatriated'.

The numbers might suggest this is not yet a migrant crisis -- but imagine the political and humanitarian furor when one of these crossings in an inflatable boat goes horribly wrong. The picture of little Alan Kurdi, the drowned Syrian Kurdish boy who washed up in Turkey, is indelibly etched into our consciousness. The photograph reportedly resulted in Chancellor Angela Merkel opening Germany's borders to a massive wave of migrants, a political decision for which German nationals and most Western Europeans continue to pay the price.

The birth of the populist movement across Germany, Sweden, Italy, Austria, Hungary and Poland is a labour of Merkel's making. She may not have children of her own, but she is seen by many as the Mother of all Migrants and the catalyst for the resulting populist surge.

Another tragedy of Alan Kurdi proportions is only a matter of time. The Channel crossing is spectacularly hazardous, home to the famous Dover Strait, according to Guinness World Records "the world's busiest shipping lane". Approximately 500-600 ships a day pass through this narrow strait between the UK and France, carrying oil from the Middle East to European ports and various commodities from North and South America to European customers.

The media are poised and salivating at the prospect of capturing this impending disaster for their front pages; the hackles of a hundred migrant and refugee charities are raised in anticipation of the PR opportunities ahead of them.

The pressure on the Home Secretary to deal with the migrants crossing the Channel is precisely because of this risk to life and the associated political ramifications. Hence his formal request for military assistance on Wednesday January 2. According to Financial Times:

"Gavin Williamson, the defence secretary, immediately responded by despatching HMS Mersey, an offshore patrol vessel, to the Kent coast, while the Royal Air Force will provide aerial surveillance."

HMS Mersey will operate there while two Border Force patrol boats return from the Mediterranean, a redeployment likely to take several weeks.

This is something of a radical change in the dynamics at play in the UK. It is a remarkable demonstration of action and determination by a British government perceived as weak and ineffective on Brexit and a soft touch on terror. For the first time in a long while, it gives a semblance of hope to many patriotic Brits who voted for Brexit precisely in order to take back control of British borders and have a say in who gains access to the island on which they live.

Sajid Javid is a rising star in the British Conservative party. His tough line on migrants, particularly Muslim migrants, is precisely the salve needed to soothe the anger of the British nationals frustrated by political obfuscation over Brexit, disgusted by the mostly Pakistani grooming gangs, and targeted by terrorists.

Javid, who was born in Rochdale, faced criticism when he posted a tweet referencing "sick Asian paedophiles" and defended their deportation. He was asked whether he took such cases personally. He said:

"When I heard about grooming gangs where almost every individual involved is of Pakistani heritage, I can't help noting that. But I can't help noting the fact that Rochdale is a town that means something to me and I'm also of Pakistani heritage."

"I'm the British home secretary," he said. "My job is to protect the British public." His actions suggest he intends to do exactly that.

If Sajid Javid can stop the boats across the Channel, he will be perfectly positioned to take control of the British Conservative Party as well as the rising migrant crisis.

David Brown is based in the United Kingdom.Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13512/english-channel-migrant-crossings Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter